Chrysalis 1971 / 2023
Locating its place in the grand scheme of things, a seminal album celebrates a jubilee.
A Space In Time
No matter how pretentious it may seem to attempt and embrace an existential continuum, once in a while an ensemble emerge who are able to seize an instant on the move rather than take a static snapshot of a certain period, which is no mean feat – never been such a thing, especially for artists who played at Woodstock and subsequently stuck in their utopian reverie. Still, there was a band who managed to break the spell – maybe because this foursome came, along with several other groups, from Britain and have ideals a bit different from American dream the rest of Yasgur Farm performers would pursue in terms of music for years. Not that TYA didn’t reap the fruits of their success – five platters into the collective’s career, each of the quartet members purchased homes in the country and sampled the newly found idyll – yet they didn’t rest on their laurels, and morphed reflection into “A Space In Time”: an album destined to carve a permanent niche in a temporal drift.
Of course, this record’s profound timelessness can’t be measured by popularity of “I’d Love To Change The World” – a single ripped out of the album’s context to become not only the Nottingham team’s highest-charting song but also their most commercial moment, a lingering one since Alvin Lee’s ballad appeared in quite a few movies, series and commercials, the piece’s prominence fueled by its ever-relevant message: here’s an extremely rare occasion when a song is driven towards eternity by dynamic waves of self-doubt and indecision rather than haunting melody, ethereal voice or furious solo. Sonics play an important role on the platter, though, from acoustic strum lacing tracks like the country-informed barroom-romp “Once There Was A Time” to the symphonic way opener “One Of These Days” floats into focus to fade away and give room to the eerie stereo panorama of a groovy spiritual where Leo Lyons’ bass and Ric Lee’s drums punctuate ghostly vocals and harmonica before guitar licks begin to sting and ring, to the orchestra lifting the folk ditty “Over The Hill” above the ground. And if the bluesy “Here They Come” and the doom-laden “Let The Sky Fall” offer bleak motifs and a psych-tinctured hint of sunshine and a storm that are destined to crawl under the listener’s skin, the frenetic “Baby Won’t You Let Me Rock ‘N’ Roll You” – sprinkled with Chick Churchill’s boogie piano and the finale “Uncle Jam” – a 2-minute-long bout of jazzy fun spliced from three different improvs on a theme – “Hard Monkeys” handles the junkie-blasting subject through serenity that will burst into an ivories-splashed, vigorous refrain, and “I’ve Been There Too” softens a similar blow with electric keyboards which underlie the filigreed instrumental ripple and a communal chorus.
The album’s remix taking up the second disc of this belated 50th Anniversary Edition doesn’t stray too far from its remastered version because it was prepared by the record’s original engineer Chris Kimsey, who faithfully enhanced the classic’s sound clarity and strengthened the songs’ punch by bringing out previously buried details – organ and chant on “Days”; bass rumble on “Time”; whistle and six-string lace on “Here”; twang on “There”; raga drone on “Sky” – even the number’s titles supporting the platter’s metaphysical slant – without changing their aural image. His approach must be the best testament to the magnificence of “A Space In Time”: the opus perfectly fresh more than five decades on.
*****
